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In other words, the landscapes and cityscapes hung up on the wall of the mayor speak to you. City planners and administrators ought to listen to their cities.
— BBC News

Peter Day spoke with Medellin's mayor, Anibal Gaviria, about how his city has changed since the Escobar years. Specifically, about the importance of "social urbanisation" and the role of urban infrastructure projects. View full entry »

Medellín has gained much attention for its urban transformation — and the escalators, which won several international prizes for innovation, make up one of the most striking projects. [...]

But are the escalators making any real economic or social impact in the neighborhood? To find out, I spent three months in Medellín talking with people in Comuna 13 about what has and hasn’t changed here.
— citiscope.org

Medellín has gained much attention for its urban transformation — and the escalators, which won several international prizes for innovation, make up one of the most striking projects. [...]

But are the escalators making any real economic or social impact in the neighborhood? To find out, I spent three months in Medellín talking with people in Comuna 13 about what has and hasn’t changed here.
— citiscope.org

Skyscrapers and shanties, gleaming malls and rundown markets, palatial houses and the piss-poor guys who build them: Those are the divides in cities like Mumbai, Nairobi and Manila. Rich and poor do not much mingle.

But a movement is afoot to change that. It aims to integrate the poor into the urban bloodstream, instead of shunting them from sight. For this "inclusive cities" movement, urban renewal doesn't require razing slums and markets.
— npr.org

Last week I attended the seventh World Urban Forum in Medellín, Colombia, where more than 20,000 city leaders, urbanists, and planners from more than 160 countries met to discuss the future of cities across the globe. [...]

Unfortunately, a number of important countries, the U.S. and Canada among them, remain worryingly undecided about joining this widespread call for a city-specific SDG from countries as diverse as Germany, Colombia, and Ghana.
— theatlanticcities.com

Mainstream sources such as CNN and The New York Times have sung the city’s praises as a stunning success story. However, now that the conference is over, there are signs that there’s trouble in Medellín’s urban planning paradise.
— thisbigcity.net

The Colombian city of Medellín was once the murder capital of the world and ground zero for Pablo Escobar’s cocaine cartel. But Medellín has lately emerged as a hotspot for urban planning and innovative mass transit. The projects are part of a long-term plan to fight poverty and remake the fortunes of the city.
— theworld.org

Around the world, followers of architecture with a capital A have focused so much of their attention on formal experiments, as if aesthetics and social activism, twin Modernist concerns, were mutually exclusive. But Medellín is proof that they’re not, and shouldn’t be. Architecture, here and elsewhere, acts as part of a larger social and economic ecology, or else it elects to be a luxury, meaningless except to itself
— NYT

Michael Kimmelman visits Medellín, Colombia and explores how architects and urban planners have used the power of public architecture and public space to remake the fortunes of a city. However, he suggests that it isn't just design but also more mundane changes such... View full entry »